Cybersecurity and the Change Healthcare outage dominated the hallway conversations at ViVE2024. AI was everywhere at ViVE2024, but companies were much more realistic with their productivity claims this year. In the exhibit hall, larger booths were more noticeable.

The three key takeaways from the ViVE2024 event for me were:

1. Cybersecurity risk and the Change Healthcare outage was top-of-mind for attendees
2. Vendors are being more realistic in their deployment of AI
3. Larger booths are starting to appear in the ViVE exhibit hall

Lots of Cybersecurity Concerns at ViVE2024

Healthcare’s vulnerability, specifically to cybersecurity threats, was a top topic of discussion at ViVE2024. Although the importance of cybersecurity has been growing steadily over the past few years, the recent outage at Change Healthcare put cybersecurity on the minds of ViVE2024’s attendees.

In the lunch lines, the crowds between sessions, and in the aisles of the exhibit hall, attendees were talking about the vulnerability of healthcare’s technology infrastructure and the increasing threat posed by cybercriminals and hostile nations.

John Lynn and I cover this topic an upcoming topic of our Healthcare IT Today podcast.

AI Maturity on Display at ViVE2024

For the past two years, AI has been sprinkled like pixie-dust on everything – booths, marketing materials, and presentations. Vendors were applying AI in fantastic new ways (read: unproven) and making incredible claims on how the technology was going to help.

At this year’s ViVE2024 event, AI was still prevalent, however, the claims being made by vendors were much more realistic and attainable. This is a clear sign that the application of AI in healthcare is maturing…at least a little.

Larger Booths Creeping into the ViVE2024 Exhibit Hall

I remember the very first ViVE was mostly filled with 10×10 and 10×20 sized booths. At ViVE2024, the number of booths bigger than 20×20 was noticeable.

I’m not sure if this is a good or bad sign, but it says to me that we are entering a new phase in the evolution of the ViVE event. Having said that, despite the larger booth footprints, the ViVE2024 exhibit hall was still very manageable.